Abstract
When you create a document on a computer, you are faced with many formatting decisions, from choosing a typeface to selecting the amount of white space that precedes a heading. In making these decisions, you want to choose a format that is easy to read, that is in character with the kind of document you have written, and that presents the work in such a way that the most important details stand out. Because of the wide selection of typography and layouts, the best thing to do is to consult a graphic designer. Most graphic designers have spent years studying different designs and can tailor a format to meet your needs.
Printing should be invisible. Type well-used is invisible as type. The mental eye focuses through type and not upon it, so that any type which has an excess in design, anything that gets in the way of the mental picture to be conveyed, is bad type.
—Beatrice Warde
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References
Hwang, A. D., “Writing in the Age of LaTeX,” Notices of the AMS, vol. 42, no. 8 (August 1985), p. 878.
Parker, HLooking Good in Print (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Ventana Press, 1987).
Sandia National Laboratories, Format Guidelines for Sandia Reports, SAND90–9001 (Livermore, California: Sandia National Laboratories, 1990).
Shushan, Ronnie, and Don Wright, Desktop Publishing by Design, 3rd ed. (Redmond, Washington: Microsoft Press, 1993).
White, Jan, Graphic Design for the Electronic Age (New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1987).
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© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Alley, M. (1996). Format: Dressing Documents for Success. In: The Craft of Scientific Writing. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2482-0_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2482-0_16
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-94766-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-2482-0
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